


Distraction

by Mireille



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-16
Updated: 2004-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-16 18:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8112967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: After "Death-Watch," Vila provides some needed distraction.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for TigerM in the 2004 B7 ficathon on LiveJournal.

Tarrant didn't know why he even bothered to lock his cabin door. He didn't expect anyone to come after him--Avon wouldn't, and Dayna and Cally had already knocked, been assured that he was fine, and gone about their business--except the one person who would regard a locked door as a personal challenge. 

As though to prove him right, the door slid open, and Vila came in, a bottle tucked under his arm. "I thought you might want a little distraction." 

"No, really, I'm all right," Tarrant said, looking up at him.

"Then I thought you might want a drink," he said, holding the bottle up for Tarrant's inspection. It was one left over from their impromptu party on the flight deck, something opaque and bluish that Tarrant didn't immediately recognize. 

Tarrant shook his head. "Not especially," he said, adding, "Thank you," after a moment. Vila was only trying to help. It wasn't his fault that Tarrant didn't really _need_ any help. He wasn't brooding, or sulking, or anything else. He'd just been sitting at the end of his bunk, thinking. They hadn't even been particularly depressing thoughts, just things about Deeta that he'd almost forgotten over the years. Things he was trying to remember now, since they were all he had left of his brother. All he'd ever have. He hadn't even had the opportunity to get to know Deeta now, except through the sensor-link.

Vila didn't seem discouraged in the slightest; he sat down at the other end of Tarrant's bunk, unscrewing the top from the bottle. "Well, I want a drink," he said, taking a long swig from the bottle. Then, making a face, he said, "And this is the last time we let Dayna pick out the alcohol. How was she supposed to develop good taste; who knows what they drank on that backwater planet she's from?" He held the bottle out to Tarrant. 

"That explains why you're so eager to share," he said, taking the bottle from Vila and taking a hesitant sip. Vila was right; the liquor was thick, sweet, and slightly sticky, obviously something meant to be drunk from very small glasses rather than gulps straight from the bottle. On the other hand, Tarrant felt the burn that indicated a fairly high alcohol content, and he decided it was worth taking a larger drink. 

Vila grinned at him. "Why waste _good_ drinks on someone else?" he agreed, reaching for the bottle again. 

They drank in silence for a few minutes, until the level of liquid in the bottle had dropped considerably. "I really am all right, you know," Tarrant said. 

There was another long silence before Vila answered. "I just thought maybe you'd want to talk to someone who--I didn't _know_ him, but I was there. In his head, I mean."

Tarrant looked up at him in genuine surprise. "Thank you," he said again. "I don't, really--I _am_ all right. Deeta knew when he became the First Champion of Teal that this could happen. That it would happen, one of these days."

"He didn't know Servalan would happen."

"No, but we stopped Servalan," he pointed out.

"I'm not talking about revenge. He was your brother. He's dead. If I had a brother--one that I knew about, anyway--I think I'd want to talk about it."

"I'm not you," Tarrant said. Then, a little less sharply, he went on, "I do appreciate it. I just don't need... I don't want to talk about Deeta." He shook his head. "After all, I hardly knew him. He left so long ago that I barely remember...."

"So you don't want to talk," Vila said. "Then we'll drink, and not talk about anything. Or talk about anything _but_ your brother. Distraction, like I said. I'm good at it."

Tarrant looked at him, thoughtfully. "You are, aren't you?"

"What?"

"Good at distraction." It was true. They'd even been _talking_ about Deeta, and he'd still felt better than he had since Vinni had shot his brother. Vila hadn't been irritatingly sympathetic, and he hadn't tried to argue Tarrant out of his mood--or even argued with him when Tarrant insisted that he wasn't in a mood to be argued out of. He'd just passed Tarrant the bottle, and agreed with Tarrant when he said he didn't want to talk, and Tarrant had found himself not thinking about Deeta quite as much as he had been before. Not that he was forgetting; he wouldn't ever forget. Deeta was his _brother_. But he couldn't brood over this for very long; it wasn't in his nature, and he was glad to have something to bring him out of himself. 

Vila shrugged. "Comes in useful." 

He supposed it would, in Vila's line of work. Not this particular sort of distraction, necessarily, but distraction, in general, being able to steer people's thoughts away from the things you didn't want them to notice. He wasn't sure why he didn't say anything more about that, except that Vila had never given them any _real_ information about his life before he came on board _Liberator_ \--not that that made Vila unique; the things they knew about one another generally had been discovered by accident--and Tarrant was reluctant to push past that boundary. It might require reciprocation, and Tarrant didn't feel like talking about his own history right now. 

What he felt like, he decided, was having another drink, and so he reached over to take the bottle out of Vila's hands. It was over half-empty by now, although Vila had accounted for most of that; Tarrant thought about getting the bottle of Terran brandy from his desk--he'd picked it up on one of the planets they'd visited, and it had somehow gone undetected and un-stolen--and decided he would, once this was gone. 

Vila didn't let go of the bottle at first, though, not realizing Tarrant had wanted it, and when Tarrant tugged at it a little, he was pulled a bit closer to Tarrant. He let go of the bottle, then, and Tarrant discovered that his grip on it hadn't been quite as firm as he thought; it fell to the floor, splashing sticky blue cordial on the floor and the silvery coverlet. 

Tarrant grinned. "I should accuse you of reading my mind," he said. 

"You've got me confused with Cally. Except that she doesn't read minds, so maybe I'm thinking of something else. Either way, I don't know what you're talking about." 

"I was just thinking that I had a bottle of something better in my desk, and now I have no choice but to get it out, since I made you spill this." 

"Purely a happy accident, that. If I'd known you had a bottle of something better, I wouldn't have _brought_ this, now would I?"

Tarrant leaned down to pick up the bottle, and when he straightened up, he discovered Vila was looking at him. He _thought_ he heard him mutter something that sounded like, " _...less_ likely to kill me than Dayna," but that didn't make any sense to him. 

Until Vila leaned in to kiss him. Tarrant was too surprised to do anything at first, but then he decided there were worse things he could do than to kiss Vila back, and one of them might have been _not_ doing it. Tarrant had been in Space Command, and he'd been a mercenary, and he'd learned a long time ago that you took comfort from a crewmate--from a friend--when you could get it, and gave it when it was needed, and he thought Vila might well have learned the same lesson in a rather different school. 

Vila's mouth tasted like the liquor, sticky and sweet, and this felt comfortable; he wouldn't trust Vila with his money, but he would with his life, and that made it easy to just relax and stop thinking for a moment, about Deeta, about Servalan, about anything at all.

Vila pulled back after a moment, and while it was obvious he was trying to look serious, Tarrant could tell from his eyes that he was quite pleased with himself. "I thought," he said, and Tarrant could hear the amusement in his voice, as well, "that you could use a little distraction."

And Tarrant thought that Deeta would understand that it didn't make his grief any less when he smiled back at Vila and said, "I think I might, at that."


End file.
